Plenary, 19 Jan 2006

Meeting date: Thursday, January 19, 2006

Official Report 727KB pdf

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Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Bill

The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-3783, in the name of Peter Peacock, that the Parliament agrees that the Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Bill be passed.

I thank members of the Scottish Parliament, especially members of the Education Committee, for the thoughtful and considered way in which they have dealt with the proposals that we have brought forward through the bill. I thank the committee clerks and the staff of the Education Department for the hard work that they have done, and I thank in particular Robert Brown for piloting the bill through stage 2.

The Education Committee's report, the evidence that was received by the committee and the results of the widespread consultation on the proposals for joint inspection demonstrated overwhelming support for the principle of joint inspection and the contribution that it can make to the continuous and sustained improvement of children's services. The bill is important, so we are very grateful for all parties' agreeing to consider its provisions on an accelerated timescale and for their co-operation in doing so.

From the outset, we recognised the importance of ensuring that the bill was short and tightly focused on providing the joint inspection team with the legal powers to do its job. For the purposes of joint inspection of child protection services, the joint inspection team needs to evaluate whether local services are working together to keep children safe and protected. The bill enables a joint inspection team to work together to use real-life case studies to assess, from the perspective of the child, whether or not an area's child protection services have protected children adequately. That would not be possible without the bill. Although we wanted to keep the bill short, the amendments that have been agreed to, partly as a result of consideration by the Education Committee, will enhance the bill's provisions considerably.

I want to highlight two important areas. First, in its stage 1 report the committee recommended that we place a requirement on the joint inspection team to have regard to a code of practice that would be published by Scottish ministers. We had already drafted a protocol setting out how a joint inspection would be conducted, but the committee considered that that should be given statutory authority. Members felt that the code of practice would help to provide reassurance on how the principle of seeking consent will be applied in line with the purpose of inspections, and on the arrangements for maintaining the confidentiality of individual records. I agree with the committee that the code will help to build confidence and understanding into the joint inspection process. We have circulated a draft code of practice on the joint inspection of child protection services to Education Committee members. Next week, it will be reissued to all relevant external interests and finalised in time for the act's commencement.

The minister will be aware of concerns that general practitioners in my constituency have expressed about safeguards for young people, particularly young women, who seek advice on sexual health. Will he consider whether such concerns could best be addressed either through the guidance or through the code of practice in order to ensure that we do not, at the same time as we introduce the new child protection measures, discourage people from seeking appropriate advice from their GPs?

Karen Gillon's intervention is timely; I am just about to set out how we will approach that matter and I acknowledge the concerns that she has highlighted. The Education Committee carefully considered the matter and has accepted our reassurances about how we want to handle it.

Quite separately, an additional code of practice will be developed as part of the consultation on the introduction of joint inspection of wider children's services. I do not expect the code to differ substantially from its current draft, apart from one important exception that will address Karen Gillon's point: it will now set out how consent will be achieved in line with the particular services to be inspected, and it will address the question whether the code should be applied differently to reflect the ages and stages of development of the children involved.

In his response to amendment 2, Robert Brown stated that the legislation and the code will be reviewed. I will return to the Education Committee, which will be involved in the review, to give members further details and timescales. I assure all members that that review will take place before the planned pilot joint inspections of children's services, which are at the moment planned for 2007.

We have also worked hard with the committee to provide reassurance on the important issue of confidentiality. There has been no disagreement over the central thrust of the joint inspection methodology, but in order to ensure that robust information is held on children's experiences, the joint inspection team must have access to children's individual records. There is widespread recognition that all the inspectorates and regulatory bodies have an impeccable track record in maintaining the confidentiality of personal records. We do not know of any complaint that confidentiality has been breached; in any case, members of the organisations are bound by their contracts of employment and by professional codes. Nevertheless, we agreed fully with the committee's view that additional reassurance would be helpful.

Because it is important to reinforce the commitment that we all share to ensure that personal information is not disclosed inappropriately, we introduced at stage 2 a duty of confidentiality to reinforce the requirement on members of the joint inspection team not to disclose confidential personal information. That amendment, together with the professional codes of conduct and contracts of employment, should reassure everyone who is concerned that inspectors take confidentiality seriously and that a robust framework to handle confidential information will be in place. There is no doubt that confidentiality is fundamental to everyone who has an interest in children's services.

At stage 2, Ken Macintosh emphasised that, in child protection matters, it is best to share information no matter what a person's professional obligations might be. The bill provides a framework that clarifies the circumstances in which that can be done and sets out how information can be shared in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and with requirements under the European convention on human rights.

Other useful points have been made in the debate. I will ask the joint inspection team to ensure that those points are reflected in the development of the joint inspection regime. For example, I know that Robert Brown has had a useful discussion with Rosemary Byrne about a particular issue involving Communities Scotland and that, at stage 2, Scott Barrie highlighted the importance of taking on board children's views.

Despite the challenging timescales, we have developed a bill that will enable the joint inspection of child protection services to proceed within the next month or so, and which will give inspectorates the powers to develop and deliver a robust joint inspection process to support the on-going improvement of child protection services.

The bill provides those powers hand in hand with reassurances that are necessary to build confidence in the process among all the relevant professionals and, crucially, among children and their families.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Bill be passed.

I rise to support the motion. The Scottish National Party has agreed from the outset to co-operate with ministers to ensure that, although the bill would be given proper scrutiny, it would be fast-tracked to allow joint inspections to continue. There is no more serious issue than child protection and, in recent weeks, society's views with regard to the risks to children have become clear.

We know from statistics that, unfortunately, children who are most at risk are often at risk from people whom they know, such as family members. It is sad that in the heat and light of the headlines, attention is given to stranger danger and the bureaucracy of lists that do not necessarily guarantee protection when, at the end of the day, children are attacked by people and not by bureaucracy or the lack of it. We can ensure that the state, in all its forms, whether at national and parliamentary level or at council level, puts its operations in order so that we can be proactive in ensuring that children are protected. That is why I strongly support joint inspections.

Interestingly, some of the controversy surrounding the differences between the legislation in Scotland and that in England has been played out in recent weeks. As part of the scrutiny of the legislation, it has been interesting to see the differences between joint inspections in Scotland and those in England. By the time the legislation is complete, the concentration on child protection in Scotland should lead to a more robust system of child protection and investigation of services than exists in England.

In its original child protection inquiry report, the Education Committee expressed concerns about the timescale for the implementation of certain protection measures, not the least of which is inspection. We are therefore keen to get implementation back on track. I refer the minister to one issue of concern. There are things that prevent the state in all its forms from supporting children—sometimes it is lack of resources, sometimes it is lack of people and sometimes it is lack of leadership.

I have a concern to raise with the minister and I hope that he will take action on it by bringing it to the attention of the inspectorates. It is to do with the City of Edinburgh Council, which has in recent weeks made clear its response to the Social Work Inspection Agency's inquiry in the Western Isles. That inquiry was pertinent to the bill. From the sad case of Caleb Ness and the recommendations of the O'Brien report, members will remember that the key issue was not necessarily a lack of social workers, but a lack of bureaucratic back-up through secretarial support. In its response to the inquiry, the City of Edinburgh Council said that the change to existing practice—the exchange of records—will

"be difficult to implement in Edinburgh, given the current inadequacy of the administration support for child-protection work, in terms of the typing of case notes, filing and photocopying."

The "typing of case notes" means the typing of current case notes. I would be appalled if there was vulnerability in the exchange of information and communication between agencies because of a lack of secretarial support for child protection cases. In the light of that, and in the light of the experiences that we have had in Edinburgh, I ask the minister to consider asking the joint inspection team to look at the City of Edinburgh Council first when the inspections get back on track.

I return to the bill. The Education Committee made good progress and its scrutiny achieved the duty of confidentiality that is now contained in the bill. The Parliament is sometimes at its best when there is co-operation between ministers and members of the Opposition; the bill is another example in which that has worked to good effect. I say to the minister in good spirit that I hope that any future child protection legislation will be treated in the same way. I therefore invite him to make an early statement to Parliament and to other interested parties about his plans for future legislation resulting from the Bichard inquiry and recent events.

I draw particular attention to the protocols. Karen Gillon made a point about young women seeking sex advice from doctors. There is an issue about there being different protocols. On that, too, we made advances, and the minister knows that I pressed the issue. There will be separate protocols for child protection and for children's services, which will allay some of the fears and concerns that we have heard from the medical profession.

Joint inspections and child protection itself will operate only if the all the players co-operate proactively and not defensively just because an act says that they must. That is the spirit of the bill, so I am pleased that we have come so far. The jury is out on how successful the legislation will be, as it will always be in child protection cases, but I am pleased to give the SNP's support to the bill.

I must thank parliamentary colleagues, ministers and the clerks for the positive and constructive way they have dealt with an extremely sensitive subject in which misunderstanding could have arisen had not immense care and understanding been used.

I believe that Parliament is discharging its duties fairly and objectively in relation to achieving the most appropriate balance between the protection of at-risk children and the retention of medical confidentiality. The protection of at-risk children is paramount and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute a few words on the matter.

We all accept that it is our inescapable duty to protect children and, in this context, at-risk children in particular. In carrying out this commitment, we have had to accept a degree of urgency in introducing the legislation in order to ensure that no children are left with insecure systems in place for the joint inspection of child protection services. Nonetheless, the bill's compressed timescale introduces the possibility that unforeseen or unintended consequences could arise. I am therefore grateful to the minister for his renewed commitment to conduct a review.

I should also mention that members of the medical profession have expressed concern that not all their members are aware of the bill. The British Medical Association said that doctors may feel that the bill takes a confrontational approach to accessing records. For example, inspectors will be able to enter general practitioners' surgeries and demand access to patient records. If access is refused, the GP could be found guilty of committing an offence. If GPs are not made aware of the legislation's details, they could seek to protect the confidentiality of their patients from inspectors. We therefore welcome the minister's assurance that appropriate targeted information for health practitioners on joint inspections of children's services and data sharing and confidentiality will be discussed with representative health bodies. I ask the minister to include the BMA in particular in such discussions, with a view to ensuring that the legislation can be applied effectively with a light touch.

In addition, there is what I might describe as the Karen Gillon point. It has been made clear to me that doctors have substantial concerns that, unless robust safeguards are in place to ensure that patient anonymity is preserved, the relationship of trust between patients and doctors could be damaged and possibly undermined. I might have wished for a further safeguard in the bill, but I will certainly support the bill, along with my colleagues, because I believe that any teething troubles in the application of the legislation will be picked up in the review and that corrective action can be introduced, if necessary.

It appears that I was the only MSP who had the temerity to lodge stage 3 amendments to the bill, but even though they were not agreed to, we are able to support the bill with a thoroughly clear conscience, safe in the certain knowledge that there will be a review, which could be of assistance to the medical profession, and recognising that great efforts have been made to put appropriate safeguards in place.

This is the first bill that I have had the privilege of being able to take through as convener of a committee, being convener of the Education Committee. I hope that other bills go through with such smoothness.

The work of the committee and members' co-operation in ensuring the passage of this important bill and, indeed, the support and co-operation of the Scottish Executive and ministers in ensuring that the concerns that were expressed by the Education Committee were addressed are an example of the Parliament's committee system working at its best. We showed that the Scottish Parliament's legislative process can be effective and that it can respond speedily and thoroughly to issues without there being a diminution of the necessary scrutiny of legislation. I record my thanks to the members of the Education Committee and, of course, to the committee clerks for the work that they have done throughout the bill's progress.

Although we had a truncated stage 1, I do not think that we were anything other than thorough. Stage 1 highlighted the need for the legislation to ensure that effective joint inspections of child protection were put in place quickly. Recent events south of the border have highlighted again how important that is. Time and again, child protection inquiries have highlighted failures in communication between agencies as being a significant factor in the failings in such cases. One such case that happened recently in Tayport in my constituency involved the sad death of Karen Dewar, who was murdered. Social work services and the police seemed to fail to communicate effectively in the circumstances that led to that unfortunate incident almost a year ago.

It is important that agencies and people such as the police, social work, schools, health visitors and GPs work together to ensure that they develop effective and co-ordinated child protection plans along with the integrated children's services plans that they are required to produce.

It must be stressed again that the purpose of the bill is not to second-guess the judgments of professionals, but to ensure that systems are in place and working effectively to ensure the protection of children.

It is essential that the inspections of child protection services get under way now, which is why the committee agreed to fast track the bill. We expressed several concerns at stage 1, particularly in relation to the confidentiality of medical information, which has been the focus of the stage 1 debate and today's debate. The medical profession and organisations that represent children's interests are understandably concerned that children should have assurances and absolute confidence that, when they seek medical advice, both the advice and the fact that they have sought it will be kept confidential. The Executive's amendments to the bill at stage 2 and the protocols and guidance that will be produced will help to ensure that confidentiality is maintained. [Interruption.] Sorry—it was on vibrate, but never mind.

Too much information. [Laughter.]

Indeed. I apologise to members for that noise.

Measures will be put in place to ensure that records are inspected only for the purposes for which they are required, that anonyminisation—"anonymisation" is a very difficult word to say and I did not say it right—of the records takes place, and that the records are destroyed a year after the report is produced. It will be almost impossible, a year after the event, to trace back the individual records that were used.

Another important point is that only people who were on the child protection register in the previous year will be the subject of child protection inspections. It is important to bear it in mind that the inspections will not go back years and years and that people will not have issues dragged out of the past that are no longer relevant in their lives. The purpose of child protection legislation is to ensure that children are protected from harm. I urge ministers to ensure that, if evidence emerges that children are putting themselves at risk of harm by not seeking appropriate medical advice because, as Karen Gillon suggested, of fear that the advice will not be treated confidentially, they will produce appropriate amendments to the act, the guidance or the protocols—whichever is most important—to address the concerns.

Finally, it is important that consultation of the Education Committee and children take place before and during the review of the legislation and before the general joint inspections begin in 2007-08.

I, too, support the bill. I thank the Education Committee, which greatly improved the bill at stage 2. I also thank the Executive, for responding positively to suggestions that were made, and the minister, for responding to concerns that I and other members raised during stage 1.

I have two concerns, which relate to confidentiality and consent. In a sense, the child protection part of the inspections is probably the least controversial part, because we accept the need for inspectors to see whether agencies are working together to protect children. The children who are involved will already have had their confidentiality breached, for the one reason that overrides patient confidentiality, and information will have been shared between the agencies. As far as child protection goes, we just have to get on with that process. I am glad that the bill will make it possible for the professions to work together.

I approve of the extension of the bill to cover other children's services, but the BMA has called on the Scottish ministers

"to give a firm commitment that the process for inspection of children's services will include a requirement to seek explicit consent before allowing access to confidential medical records."

That point should be taken on board because confidentiality might be breached not in the child's interests, but in the interests of service provision. That is a slightly different issue, so consent should be explicit rather than implied.

I welcome the bill, as do my former colleagues in community paediatrics, because it will allow them to get on with what they want to do.

I support the bill. The Education Committee, of which I am a member, has done a great deal of work to get the bill into its present form. A number of issues remain, but we must thank the minister for listening and intervening as much as he did in trying to sort out the issues that the committee raised.

During the progress of the bill through stages 1 and 2, a number of issues were raised regarding the sharing with non-medical people of confidential records without informed consent. We have heard a lot about that and the BMA believes that it could put a strain on patient-doctor relationships. During stage 2, the deputy minister Robert Brown made a commitment to a separate protocol for inspection of children's services. That is to be welcomed, but the BMA continues to express concern and is unable to support the bill. I therefore ask the minister to continue to participate in a dialogue with the BMA and to monitor the situation closely.

I thank the deputy minister for his assurances regarding my concerns about children and young people who live with drug and alcohol misusing parents, and I hope that we can be assured that issues about children in homeless families will be taken into account. It is important that we scrutinise what our local authorities are doing with the protocols and how they are joining up services. It would do no harm to write to them to ask how they join up social services, homelessness teams, schools, education and so on. I am assured that joint inspections can consider those areas if there is a need to do so.

There is no room for complacency—if in the future there are gaps that we can point to, we should seek to do that as much as we can. The bill is a wide piece of legislation to protect children. I welcome it, but I hope that we can keep an eye on the situation as it progresses.

Before I move to the wind-up speeches, to ensure that I can call everyone who wishes to speak I have taken a minute off everyone except Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, who had only a minute anyway.

Labour's manifesto in 2003 stated:

"The measure of the society we are building will be the quality of the protection it offers our children."

When three-year-old Kennedy McFarlane of Dumfries was murdered in 2000, the subsequent inquiry revealed a serious lack of communication between the different agencies that should have been involved in her protection. Despite the concerns of her playschool, reports—by health visitors and her general practitioner—about injuries and admissions to hospital, she was killed before a case conference could be convened. The bill is part of the solution that will prevent such tragedies from happening in the future.

Original advice to ministers was that joint inspections could be achieved only by administrative means. However, the minister said in his evidence to the Education Committee on 26 May 2004 that if there was a need to legislate, the Executive would take the powers to do so. The three pilots that were run last year have proved that such legislation is necessary. As we have heard, the BMA has concerns about the sharing of information that is contained in young people's records. However, such information can already be shared if it is required for the purposes of protecting an individual child or young person. Indeed, Morgan Jamieson of the Scottish Executive's Health Department advised the committee on 23 November last year:

"If the records of a family member were pertinent to a child's safety, that circumstance would override the confidentiality duty towards other family members as well."—[Official Report, Education Committee, 23 November 2005; c 2805.]

I should mention the view of other professionals, for example Dr Hammond of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who stated:

"My colleagues and I feel that to inspect services properly we have to have a 360° look round."

She also said that

"the tracking of the chronology of events from the raising of the first concerns about the child right through to successful protection—we hope—or unsuccessful protection is critical in allowing us to identify where things went wrong or went well so that we can improve our services. Without joint consideration, we will not be able to do that."—[Official Report, Education Committee, 23 November 2005; c 2808.]

There have been more general concerns about the sharing of such information during the inspections of children's services in general, rather than the forthcoming child protection inspections. The committee heard evidence from the chief executive of the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, Jacquie Roberts, that

"there are children who are not in the child protection system but who need to be. Unless we consider services in the round, we will not find out about such children and whether the systems in children's services generally are in place to identify effectively the children who are at risk."—[Official Report, Education Committee, 23 November 2005; c 2819.]

Sadly, children such as Kennedy McFarlane and Caleb Ness will continue to require protection. The passing of the bill will enable the provision of systems to ensure that we can effectively identify children who are at risk. The legislation will assure people that systems are in place in each local authority area and that they are joined up throughout Scotland. We need to be able to do that to ensure the much-needed protection of vulnerable children and young people. I am pleased to support the legislation.

Elaine Murray rightly reminded us of the immense and solemn importance of the subject. Thanks are due to the Education Committee clerks, who helped us to progress important legislation in record time. I am also grateful to the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People and his officials, who acted in a spirit of co-operation.

Many important points have been made today about issues of concern. My appeal to the minister is that there be scope to adjust the draft protocols in the light of consultation as well as to adjust the legislation after a review, in due course. Sir Winston Churchill used to say:

"It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."

I support the bill because it is one link in the chain of destiny of our nation's children, who are our destiny.

I commend the social workers in Scotland, who have a difficult and often thankless task and provide a delicate service in difficult situations. The Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Bill is not an attack on that service; rather, it aims to be supportive and constructive by helping people to share data. Before, data were there but the situation was like a jigsaw—information was available on Caleb Ness, on Kennedy McFarlane and, in my constituency, on Miss X, but it was not shared.

The bill is a huge step forward. When services cross-reference and share information, children who are at risk can be identified and tracked and, perhaps more important, children who were not previously considered to be at risk can be discovered. Notwithstanding the fact that the bill's progress has been accelerated, there is agreement throughout Parliament that it is important. It is better to have the bill than not to have it, but the fact that it has been accelerated means that the codes of practice and protocols are even more significant. As I understand it, there will be separate codes or protocols for child protection and children's services.

On confidentiality, it is difficult to strike the right balance between the rights of the child, the rights of third parties and the interests of the child. It will not be easy to achieve that balance and there may well be legal challenges when the codes and protocols are in place. However, taking on those challenges will be worth while if the bill protects a single child in Scotland from experiencing an horrific life that ends with an horrific death. The building in of disciplinary measures for breaches of confidentiality reinforces the significance of confidentiality. As the minister rightly said, staff are bound by their contractual obligations and employment obligations. That should provide a robust framework and a comfort to third parties who feel that their rights might be infringed.

Implied consent is also a delicate matter but, subject to the protocols, I welcome the provisions in the bill. The people who do not want us to find out about children's records are the very people we should not have to ask. I appreciate that there might be difficulties about ages because in the bill "child" means a person under the age of 18. We have a conflict in Scotland because people can get married at 16, so there might be difficulties involving 16-year-olds and implied consent. However, I am sure that the minister will address that with the Education Committee and Parliament through the protocols.

Finally, I will mention the issue of vulnerable adults, which I dealt with in the Miss X case in the Borders all those years ago. I welcome the powers for social work inspectors to investigate and so on, but given that we are now familiar with the term "elder abuse"—we never thought that we would be—and that some vulnerable adults are like children, I would like the minister to provide for those people the same protection that we hope to provide for Scotland's children. I hope that the minister will consider putting in place protocols to protect vulnerable adults and elderly people.

The bill is a worthy piece of work. As is always the case with legislation, the devil will be in the detail—that is, in the codes of practice and the protocols. As I said, I suspect that there will be legal challenges, but so be it. It is better to pass the bill and to put Scotland on the front foot in protecting its children. Abuse often takes place in the child's own home. As my colleague Fiona Hyslop said, the abuser is often not the stranger in the dark but the person at home, the neighbour or the friend of the family. The bill will provide support to Scotland's children. We commend it.

This has been an excellent debate and I thank members of the Parliament and of the Education Committee for their support throughout what has been a fairly difficult process.

I begin by responding positively to Fiona Hyslop's suggestion that matters of child protection should be dealt with broadly on a cross-party basis. That is entirely right and is what ministers have tried to do with the bill. I hope that that co-operation will continue as we move forward.

From the outset, the Education Committee has expressed full support for the principles of the bill, and its recommendations and amendments were intended to provide reassurance and to build confidence in the joint inspection process. The bill is now more robust and provides the framework for a strengthened joint inspection process.

I will respond to those who have made observations on the bill, and particularly to the British Medical Association's comments. There will, of course, be an on-going dialogue with all the interest groups involved, and with the BMA in particular.

We are especially concerned about sexual health issues that may affect young people, as Karen Gillon and other members said during the debate. We must consider the matter further as part of the consultation that we will be conducting on the joint inspection of wider children's services, and that is the proper way to do it. We have a little more time to do that, without the rush that there might have been on the protocol for child protection services, and we certainly intend to involve all parties in finding the right way forward, taking account of issues such as the differing ages of those involved.

Will the minister consider putting protocols in place for vulnerable adults?

That is a different issue. A bill on vulnerable adults will be introduced in due course, as Christine Grahame is aware, and that is the proper place for that debate.

We can now look forward. Joint inspection will help all those concerned with improving children's services to develop a shared understanding of what good-quality children's services should look like, including the collaborative working arrangements that are necessary for the delivery of continuous and sustained improvements for children. The focus of the discussions on the bill has been the conduct of joint inspections but, as Iain Smith, Fiona Hyslop and Elaine Murray said, there is a much bigger issue behind the bill, arising out of the tragic circumstances of one or two individual situations. We must remember that we have not introduced the bill because we consider inspection to be an end in itself; the value of joint inspection is the contribution that it can make to improving outcomes for individual children and for children's services generally.

There can be no doubt about the determination of the Executive or the Parliament, or about our joint long-standing commitment to supporting improvement. We all share a common goal of improving services for all children, and we want every child to fulfil their potential and to be provided with every opportunity to succeed. Some—too many over the years—have slipped through the net. Too many are not getting good enough services to support their needs and to ensure that they thrive, and that is what the bill is all about.

Fundamental change to improve outcomes for all Scotland's children is at the heart of the Executive's priorities. The Cabinet delivery group for children and young people, which is chaired by Peter Peacock, has identified where fundamental change is required. Joint inspection and the improvement of services is one of five distinct, but closely related, areas of cross-cutting work that we have identified, and progress is under way for all of those strands to ensure that children are safe, nurtured, healthy, achieving, included, active, respected and responsible.

Joint inspection is part of our work to introduce co-ordinated arrangements for the quality assurance of services for children. In parallel with preparations for the joint inspection of children's services, which will be piloted in 2007, we want to see in place in every children's services organisation arrangements to assess and improve the quality of services across organisational boundaries. We want quality improvement systems for every children's services organisation, systems for scrutiny and inspection, and transparent and accountable reporting arrangements.

A key point is the joint inspection of child protection services, as Fiona Hyslop said, to which we have paid specific attention in Scotland, ahead of the rest of the work programme. I want to make clear to Parliament why, within children's services, we have made that our priority. Fiona Hyslop was right to point out that, amidst all the furore that we have seen in recent days, particularly in England, it is worth remembering that most abuse of children takes place in the home and involves family members or others in the family circle, and that much damage to children results from neglect or from parental addiction to drink or drugs, and that it can often be intergenerational. That is why the quality of the services that we provide to intervene and to support children is of paramount importance. That is why child protection had to be the first area of children's services to be inspected, and there was a commitment in the 2003 partnership agreement to that effect.

The reform programme is producing action on a variety of fronts to ensure that children are protected and kept safe. We published the children's charter and the framework for standards and have strengthened the role of the child protection committees. We are following through on the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry to ensure that we have a safer workforce and safer arrangements. In that regard, some of the issues that have emerged in recent days will be taken on board.

The joint inspection process will be innovative and we will learn lessons from it. The child's journey through the various services that they have received will be evaluated and when good practice is identified, it will be disseminated.